nk I oughtn't to be sittin' up. You mightn't just understand that
'twas because this is my only real home."

"Your only real home? Why, Mother!"

"The rest of the house is so big--and so _awful_ new-fashioned and
grand. Not like me a bit," she apologized meekly--but not with the
flurried meekness of her apologies to Peter senior. "Here you've saved
all my dear old things I had in the days before everything was big. I
never _can_ get used to it, and I never will now. It's the bigness, I
guess, that's seemed--somehow--to take your pa and Ena away from
me--long ago. But I've got you. And you let me come here. So I am
happy. I'm a real happy woman, Petie. And I want you to be happy the
way you used to be--or some better way, not all restless like you are
now. I guess if there was some one you loved different from me you
wouldn't make a new life for yourself without a little place in it for
mother, would you--just a weenty little place I could come and live in
sometimes for a while?"

"I'd want you in it always," said Peter. He leaned up and wound his
arms around the plump, formless waist in the neat dressing-gown. "So
would _she_--if there were a she. I hate the 'bigness,' too--the kind
of false, smart bigness that you mean. We'll have a little house--she
and you and I. For your room will be there, and you'll be in it
whenever father'll spare you. But I'm running away in what I used to
call my 'dreamobile!' I haven't found her yet. That is, I found her
once and lost her again. I'm looking for her now. Mother, do you know
what a _'leitmotif'_ is?"

"No, dear, indeed I don't. I'm afraid I don't know many of the things
I---"

"There's no reason why you should know this. In Wagner's operas, which
I don't understand, perhaps, but which I love with thrills in my
spine--and that's a _kind_ of understanding--whenever a character
comes on the stage he or she always is followed by a certain strain of
music--music that expresses character, and seems even to describe a
person. Well, wallflower perfume might be your _leitmotif_. Can't you
_hear_ perfume? I can. Just as you can seem to see music--wonderful,
changing colours. The wallflower scent's all around us now. It's you.
But through it I imagine another perfume. It's here, too. It's been
with me for months. Because I've got to feel it's her spirit, her
_leitmotif_. The perfume of fresias. Do you know it?"

"I thought maybe she liked it," mother said calmly.

"What put that